Parse

Parse reads a file (PDF, image, DOCX, XLSX, CSV and more) and turns it into structured text with layout: pages, blocks, tables, reading order, and a confidence per block. Every workflow starts with exactly one Parse node, and every other node reads what Parse produced. It lives in the Intelligence section of the Studio palette. Most workflows never configure it. The one choice that matters is the tier (mode): how much work to spend per page, from reading the PDF’s own text layer to a multi-step pass over dense tables.

The node

{ "id": "parse_1", "type": "parse" }

import os

from anyformat.sdk import Client

client = Client(api_key=os.environ["ANYFORMAT_API_KEY"])

workflow = (
    client.workflow("Read only")
    .parse()             # mode="standard" by default
    .create()
)

import { Anyformat } from "@anyformat/sdk";

const af = new Anyformat({ apiKey: process.env.ANYFORMAT_API_KEY! });

const workflow = await af
  .workflow("Read only")
  .parse()               // mode: "standard" by default
  .create();

A Parse node alone is a complete workflow: it returns the document as markdown and nothing else. See Parse-only workflow. The same node, on the agentic tier with the highest effort:

{ "id": "parse_1", "type": "parse", "mode": "agentic", "effort": "accurate" }

client.workflow("Dense tables").parse(mode="agentic", effort="accurate")

af.workflow("Dense tables").parse({ mode: "agentic", effort: "accurate" })

In Studio

Click the Parse node on the canvas to open its panel. The four tiers are the cards at the top; the advanced options sit below them.

Tiers

Tier	`mode`	What it does	When to use it	Credits / page
Flash	`flash`	Reads the PDF’s own text layer plus layout grounding. No model call. A page without a text layer is OCR’d (see `scanned_pages`).	Born-digital PDFs, high volume, lowest cost.	7
Fast	`lite`	One OCR pass on the strongest engine. No LLM correction.	Clean scans and simple layouts where OCR alone is enough.	12
Standard	`standard`	Page-by-page parsing with reading-order correction. The default.	Most documents and tables. Start here.	25
Agentic (Beta)	`agentic`	Adaptive, multi-step parsing that works hardest on dense tables (50+ rows, many columns).	Complex layouts where Standard output is not good enough.	100

Start on Standard. Move a workflow down to Fast or Flash for the document types where it holds up, and up to Agentic only where Standard underperforms. You rarely need Agentic everywhere.

Options

Every field is optional. Omit a field and the default applies. Fields that belong to another tier are accepted and ignored.

Field	Type	Default	Applies to	What it does
`mode`	`standard` \| `agentic` \| `lite` \| `flash`	`standard`	all	The tier. `lite` is shown as Fast in the app.
`prompt_hint`	string	`null`	standard, agentic, flash	Free-form hint that biases the parse output, for example “the second column is a date”. Ignored on Fast.
`figure_enhancement`	boolean	`false`	standard	Extract structured data from charts and images. Extra processing per figure.
`cache`	boolean	`true`	all	Reuse the parsed output when the same file was already parsed with the same tier and settings. A hit skips the whole parse and its cost. Set `false` to force a fresh parse.
`effort`	`low` \| `mid` \| `accurate`	`mid`	agentic	Quality and cost preset. `low` is several times cheaper but makes more errors on dense or low-contrast tables; `accurate` is the highest fidelity.
`ocr_effort`	`medium` \| `high`	`high`	lite	Retired. Accepted for compatibility and ignored; Fast always runs the strongest OCR. Do not set it.
`scanned_pages`	`ocr` \| `skip` \| `fail`	`ocr`	flash	What to do with a page whose text layer has no words. `ocr` parses it like any other page; `skip` serves it blank and flags it; `fail` raises an error naming the page numbers.

The schema the API accepts is generated from the same source: Parse node schema.

Connects to

Parse

Extract Classify

Parse also feeds Split, Edit and Knowledge.

Nothing feeds Parse. It is always the first node. A workflow has exactly one Parse node, and the app and the API both reject a second one.

What it returns

Parse fills the parse section of the run results. Two keys carry the document: markdown holds it as one markup string, and blocks holds the same content block by block.

{
  "parse": {
    "markdown": "…",
    "parse_confidence": 90.6,
    "layout_confidence": 0.7,
    "blocks": [
      { "id": "p1_b1", "type": "text", "page": 1, "content": "Invoice #: INV-2026-9001" }
    ]
  }
}

The markdown value is elided above, because it is the whole document and runs to thousands of lines. In it, each block opens with an <a id="p<page>_b<n>"> anchor and every table is an HTML <table> element, so the text stays quotable and a citation can point at one block. parse_confidence is on a 0 to 100 scale; layout_confidence is on a 0 to 1 scale. Each entry in blocks repeats both confidences and adds the block’s id, type, page and content.

The complete parse section

{
  "parse": {
    "markdown": "…",
    "text": "…",
    "parse_confidence": 90.6,
    "layout_confidence": 0.7,
    "blocks": [
      {
        "id": "p1_b1",
        "type": "text",
        "page": 1,
        "bbox": { "x0": 0.114, "y0": 0.132, "x1": 0.322, "y1": 0.210 },
        "parse_confidence": 96.5,
        "layout_confidence": 0.96,
        "content": "Invoice #: INV-2026-9001  \nIssue date: 2026-02-20",
        "hyperlinks": [],
        "rows": null,
        "image_base64": null
      }
    ]
  }
}

text is the same document without the anchors or the table markup. bbox is in fractions of the page size.

Every other section of the envelope is on Runs & results. See Outputs for the CSV, JSON and Excel exports built on top of the parse.

Billing

Billed per page at the tier’s rate (table above). A cache hit costs nothing. Full price list: How credits work.

Examples

Parse-only workflow: the document as markup, on each tier.
POST /v3/parse/: one document on the Fast tier in one call, with no workflow to create.
Agentic parse to markdown: dense tables on the agentic tier.
Invoice processing: the usual Parse to Extract shape.

Get started

Nodes

Workflows

Schema & fields

Documents

Outputs & integrations

Health

Billing

The node

In Studio

Tiers

Options

Connects to

What it returns

Billing

Examples

​The node

​In Studio

​Tiers

​Options

​Connects to

​What it returns

​Billing

​Examples

The node

In Studio

Tiers

Options

Connects to

What it returns

Billing

Examples